Stonehenge was published by HarperCollins in 2000 as a standalone novel set in roughly 2000 BC, during the late Neolithic period when the great sarsen stones were transported from the Marlborough Downs and erected at Stonehenge. This is Cornwell’s most unusual novel — there are no historical records to draw on, no battles in the conventional sense, no armor or swords. The world of Stonehenge is a world of flint tools, leather clothing, thatched roundhouses, and a society organized around tribal chieftains and priests whose power derives from their claimed ability to communicate with the gods.
The story centers on three brothers: Lengar, the eldest, a warrior who seizes power by murdering their father; Camaban, the middle son, a crippled outcast who becomes a sorcerer; and Saban, the youngest, a builder whose practical skills will ultimately realize Camaban’s mad vision. Camaban has seen a vision — a great temple of stone that will unite earth and sky, bring the gods close, and end the cycle of suffering and death. The temple is Stonehenge.
The World Cornwell Creates
The novel’s greatest achievement is its evocation of a world radically different from anything in Cornwell’s other fiction. There are no roads, no writing, no cities. Trade exists — amber from the Baltic, gold from Ireland, jet from Whitby — but it moves along networks of paths and rivers, carried by traders who are sacred and inviolable. Warfare is brutal but small-scale: raids between tribes, ambushes, single combats. The dead are exposed on platforms or buried in long barrows with grave goods. The priests — whom Cornwell portrays as a mixture of genuine mystics and cynical manipulators — wield enormous power through their control of ritual and their claimed ability to read the will of the gods in the movements of sun and moon.
The construction of the temple itself is described with the technical precision that Cornwell brings to all his subjects. The sarsen stones weigh up to 45 tons each and were dragged roughly 25 miles from the Marlborough Downs using sledges, rollers, and the labor of hundreds of people. The lintels were raised using timber cribbing — platforms of logs stacked alternately to gradually lift the stone to the height of the uprights. Cornwell consulted extensively with archaeologists, and his account of the engineering is consistent with current scholarly thinking about how it was likely accomplished.
Critical Perspective
The novel received mixed reviews. Readers who came to Cornwell for military action found the pace slower than expected, while literary critics praised the ambition of imagining an entirely preliterate world. The characterization of Camaban — part visionary, part tyrant, wholly terrifying in his obsessive pursuit of his vision — is among Cornwell’s most complex creations. The novel raises questions about the cost of great achievements: Stonehenge is built, but the human suffering required to build it is enormous, and the question of whether it was “worth it” is left deliberately open.
Collecting Stonehenge
First edition (HarperCollins, London, 2000): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $25–$60
- Very good: $10–$30